Twilight of the Gods
by Spinnd
Summary: No matter. He never thought he’d die any other way but saving the Universe. And Rose deserved no less either." An AU Journey's End. Warnings for some violence and major character deaths.
1. An Axe Age

_Author's Notes: Don't think I'm the only one to have imagined "Journey's End" turning out differently from RTD's script - so that's what fandom is for. I've kept to some of the original scenes, but this is obviously an AU version of JE, so expect employment of creative liberties, along with different characters' POVs. Hope you all enjoy it. _

_Warnings: Major! character deaths, some violence, possibly a depressing ending._

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They transmat into the Vault yelling and screaming and tumbling, disoriented yet spitting fight and fire, ready as ever to do the stupidest things if it meant saving the world and its universe.

He sees the defiance in every fibre and sinew, recognizes it, and knows nothing good will come of it.

"Stop! Just do as they say!" _Don't let there be any more deaths._

"Doctor?" They chorus, angry and confused.

"_Please_."

They drop to their knees slowly, Mickey last of them, dark eyes raging and his body obeying only the Doctor and nothing else - not the Daleks, not even his own stubborn pride.

Davros laughs, a distorted sound that bites into the core of him, mocking the pain and guilt it uncovered.

"The Doctor," he sneers through harsh exhalations, "and his little humans, loyal and noble to the end. Not that it will save any of you, or anyone else."

The smile stretches, grotesque.

"Supreme Dalek, you may begin Phase 2."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Planetary re-alignment completed. Engaging universal detonation."

The cold fear sinks in deep, pulls at his hearts. The Doctor clenches his fist, wracking his brain as he fumbles in the dark. His brilliant brain had to up and leave him now - _thanks a bunch – _and he tries to ignore the five humans kneeling on the floor and the weight of their gaze on him. Doesn't want to know if Rose is looking at him either; he wouldn't be able to stand her disappointment.

In the thrum of engines working to full power, almost no one notices the familiar gasping whirrs until it has almost fully re-materialized.

"The TARDIS!" Martha yells.

"How?!" Jack and Rose echo simultaneously.

Davros backs away, just a few yards, seething, and just a little taken surprised. "That's impossible."

Acting skills may have saved that one surprise for him– his mind link to the TARDIS prepared him as much – but still, seeing his old ship in its boxy blue physicality sends sharp relief coursing up the Doctor's spine. His old girl, his constant companion; she was still there, still strong.

And still surprising him as ever, because while her presence had all along been alive in his mind, he is absolutely unprepared for the two partial minds that burst into his consciousness as the door is flung open…

By him. By him, holding a rather large gun.

"What." he breathes.

His self, in his blue suit, comes running straight at Davros, and he briefly wonders if he is actually that thick in real life.

"Don't!" He shouts, just as a blue bolt sizzles from a metal fingertip and stabs into his Other's chest. The man collapses with a cry as the energy wreaks havoc on delicate nerves.

Donna runs out next – he really should've expected that, but he didn't. She reaches the dropped gun, but the bolt reaches her as well, and flings her to the floor.

"Activate the holding cells!"

Two other force fields erect themselves around Donna and his clone, and he fights back a stab of despair as Davros' laugh echoes through the room.

"Detonation in ten!"

"A brave, but futile display. And now that we are through with the distractions, Doctor, direct your focus to the image feed, if you will."

"Nine..."

The scientist pulls up close to the Doctor, just on the edge of the prison's force field. An unseen button activates the holographic screen, planets swimming into view, and they watch as he scrolls through them before pulling out to a screen of bright dots and binary. The Doctor forces back a swell of fear – he didn't have time for hysterics.

"Davros, you have to stop."

"-Six"

"Do you really think I will stop now? After all I've done? After all that's been lost and rebuilt by my own hands, Doctor?"

"Five."

"I think not."

He smacks a hand into the force field. "Listen to me! The bomb will tear the Universe apart; there will be nothing left. A Universe without Reality cannot exist, and if the Universe doesn't exist, neither will you!"

"Four..."

The man regards him coolly.

"That's where you're wrong, Doctor. Reality will still exist."

"Three."

"We will still exist."

"Two."

"Because Reality will become Us."

"One."

They all watch in silence as a bolt of white runs down the line of planets, a shimmering blaze that bursts into black as it hits the edge of the Cascade, a black mouth that ripples and writhes against the colours of the Cascade, pulsating, gnawing, _eating_ through space and time.

It breaks through.

And the Doctor collapses with a silent scream.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The bolt of pain sears through his head and buries itself deep in his mind, pushing deeper still as he cries and fights against the crippling agony of Time unwound. The threads fall apart, come undone, and he feels in his very soul the utter wrongness of it all. Worlds disintegrate and tear, scarring through his Time Sense, bending and stretching Reality as timelines arrest prematurely; timelines meant to live on for centuries more.

When he comes to, he finds himself on the floor of his prison, mind and body shaking with loss and pain. Above the ringing in his ears, he hears the grating metallic screech of Dalek orders and the very human voices laced with anger.

"-t did you do to him?"

"The prisoners will be silent!"

"Doctor!"

He pulls an arm from underneath him and attempts to pick himself off the cold deck. Davros wheels closer and he can almost hear the madman smirk.

"That demonstration was only a fraction of its power, Doctor." The hiss is low and smug. "Now I will take my leave. I am needed for the final calibrations. The Bomb must be operating at maximum if we are to succeed."

"You're mad." His voice cracks, sounds feeble even to him. He curses his weakness and blames it on age and compassion.

"So they tell me, Doctor," the room hollows out the chuckle as the lift ascends, "so they tell me."


	2. A Sword Age

"Activating temporal cell alpha two alpha."

The Daleks back away and another force field springs up, large enough to hold the five Companions.

"Cell activated. Daleks, stand guard."

"Doctor?" Rose presses up against her prison wall. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." They both answer at the same time. He glares at his clone, who looks suitably nonplussed but still indignant.

"What the hell is that?" Mickey points at the blue suited Doctor.

"Human-Time Lord biological meta-crisis." The other him answers, slightly affronted.

"Donna touched the jar, didn't you, Donna? Initiation of genetic material transfer via the residual atron energy and the resulting fusion of human and Time Lord DNA – and here you are: Me." He shakes his head in wonder, then regrets the action as his vision whites out.

"Whoa, stay with us, Doc." He hears Jack call above the other voices.

"I'm fine," he tells them again, and himself, "I'm fine."

"Hold on. If he's got hit so bad, why aren't you affected?" Donna asks his blue-suited self with genuine interest.

"I'm only part Time Lord, Donna. My Time Sense is diminished, even my psychic link to the TARDIS is nowhere as powerful. I'm part human, weaker in all these because I got that part from you."

"Oi." She scowls at his clone, and he involuntarily grins at the sight.

"Wait a minute. If he's part human, doesn't that make Donna-" Martha trails off.

"Donna what?" The redhead looks from him to his clone, to and fro, repeatedly. "I'm what?"

His grimace is unnervingly mirrored in the Other's face. "You're part Time Lord, Donna."

"The three-fold man!" A screech startles everyone, but it jars the memory in her head and Donna understands enough, he can tell, to go appropriately pale.

"DoctorDonna. I'm the DoctorDonna? I'm DoctorDonna?" A flush appears, and her eyes are anxious, scared, and holding a hidden promise that when this is over she will most probably slap both of him. "But I don't feel any different. I'm fine, I'm just a human, a normal human. Doctor, I don't feel anything different."

"Donna, calm down," he coughs to clear the sand from his voice. "Calm down, we'll fix this."

"The three-fold man appears in fire and pain!"

"Doctor?" Rose ignores the soothsayer's words. "Doctor, we have to do something. We have to get out of here."

"You'd think with three of the likes of him, they'd have thought of something by now."

"Mum!"

He carefully straightens up – still seated, one hand brushing the force field.

"Unidirectional, highly localized energy beams giving structural integrity, electromagnetic fields creating the barrier, affects molecular movement through them. But disrupt the field, and you disrupt the structure. Weaken the structure…" he leaves his hand on the wall long enough for his palm to tingle sharply, "and the barrier becomes permeable."

He frowns. "Blast, they took my sonic."

"Good thing you always have a spare lying around." Donna murmurs.

He stares, thinks he heard wrong, and tries not to give too much away when she brushes at her hip, grinning when he realizes that Donna Noble, his Donna Noble, is absolutely far more brilliant than he says she is.

"River Song," is all he needs by way of explanation to his bemused Other. He sends an apologetic smile to his other companions who have been looking on without the faintest trace of understanding. No, no time for explanations. And there were the Daleks.

"With reds and dampeners." His clone copies the grin as his fades, his hearts twisting in a flurry of emotions he now associates with red-blonde curls, a wide smile and a spacesuit.

"Setting 2458," he tells Donna. She looks down, then up again and stares at the five Daleks patrolling the room, lips thinning into a grimace.

"Doctor?"

"Not now, Rose." He only allows himself a brief moment to feel bad for brushing her off. A diversion, he wracks his brain. They need a diversion.

"Have I kept you waiting, Doctor?" The speaker booms to life, and everyone jumps. "You must know I was only making sure everything was perfect."

Caan screeches a laugh, high and clear, tentacles flailing.

"The Storm on the Bay. It is coming; the Storm that brings life and death for all!"

He watches as the screen flickers and the static slowly clear. "Davros-"

"Don't waste your breath, Doctor. The Reality bomb is primed and ready, and you and your humans now stand to witness the birth of a new Universe across Time and Space!"

The screen turns black. A whine fills the Vault, high and thrumming with energy as power surges through the entire hull of the mothership, and the screen flickers back to life in time for them to see the feedback loop coalesce green energy at the tip of the weapon. The metal floor crackles and strains as charges flow and atoms realign.

He slumps forward onto his hands, and braces himself for what is to come.

"No, Doctor!" Rose cries out, suddenly realizing what he was doing, and presses herself against the force field. He thinks, faintly, that it hurt her to do so.

He closes his eyes so he can't see the absolute horror in hers, because he is determined that his last seconds of sanity be spent in silent pride of his humans. His brave, scared humans: wonderful, wonderful Martha; Mickey -who's grown up so much; incorrigible, loyal Jack; his one and only Sarah Jane; even Jackie, who braved alternate worlds for her daughter. His Rose, beautiful and brave. And brilliant fiery Donna. They'll think of something, he's sure of it. His other self will make sure of it.

When the Bomb detonates, the pain is unlike anything he's ever imagined.


	3. A Wind Age

Rose screams just as he does, your other (true) self, her cry of terror drowned in his wail of agony as the Reality Bomb shreds Time in his mind and rips threads of reality apart. You know the stabbing pain in your left ear is hardly worth a mention in the face of what the Bomb is doing to him.

Sarah Jane, never one for hysterics, now screams at an empty screen in place of Davros. Martha cries for her Doctor, while Mickey and Jackie mutely watch the scene in growing horror. Jack, well, Jack is livid; you can tell from the veins standing out on his neck, and from the way he's throwing himself at the wall, screaming murder at the Daleks who in turn have trained their weapons on him.

You couldn't have asked for a better diversion.

"Donna!" You hiss, and note belatedly that her eyes are pinched shut and her knuckles grind into her temple to relieve a present pain.

"Donna!"

Her eyes fly open and meet yours.

"What the hell is happening to me?"

"Time Lord brain," you explain feebly, wincing as a bolt of pain drives itself between your eyes and your other self shrieks in pain, crying out in mangled Gallifreyan.

"Is that why-?" She gestures at the Doctor, close to tears.

_Not now, Donna, don't fall apart on me now._ "Donna!"

She stumbles under another wave – you realize that the peaks must be coinciding with every planet blown apart – and when her eyes close again, you fear the stress of the Time Sense on her human brain is too great.

Then she straightens up, opens glowing eyes, and slides the sonic screwdriver from her pocket.

"Setting 2458; stabilize with dampners, add a twist of 91, disrupt the field, and…" she turns the knobs in one smooth motion, "voila!"

Jack falls forward, onto the smooth deck of the Vault.

If the Daleks had mouths, you would've given almost anything to see them hanging open.

"The hell-?"

"Prisoners have escaped!"

You give yourself a moment to beam at Donna before you run to the central console, catching the screwdriver she tosses to you mid-air, and slam your free hand into three grey buttons. A flick of the screwdriver sets the console sparking just as a Dalek turns its attention to you with a metallic screech.

"Exterminate!"

You smirk as its weapons click empty.

"Oh, I don't think so."

Jack launches himself into one of the Daleks and sends it careening into the others. Mickey grabs the three women with him and pushes them into a crevice in the wall, narrowly avoiding a Dalek that he then blinds by snapping the eyestalk askew with brutal force.

Donna runs to join you and you both hang onto the console as the ship shudders with a surge of power and a searing pain almost drops you both to your knees.

"Remember what I said earlier?" You grit your teeth and lock away the shadow of your Time Sense. "If we can re-program the Bomb with isomorphic parameters and set it loose on specific biological energy signatures, we can latch the beam onto the Daleks themselves, here take this-" Donna fumbles with the screwdriver settings, "- and then it's bye bye Daleks!"

"Doctor!"

You halt at Rose's scream, and you know, somehow you know, she is calling for you and not Him.

"Doctor!"

You turn to Donna, who nods and shoos you away with a gentle "I know what I'm doing." So you take her cue, her unspoken well wishes, and run.

You drop down next to Rose, who has been shielding her Doctor's prone form from the chaos of Jack, Mickey, and freewheeling unhappy Daleks. Tears smudge her makeup, but she's beautiful, just like you remembered.

The body on the floor arches weakly, a ragged cry tearing from his throat. Blood rills from his nose and drips toward the floor - she looks at you desperately.

"He's dying."

You nod slightly, but say nothing. For all your gift of talk, you are suddenly stuck with how to explain your/His Time Sense to her, that the very thing that set you apart as Time Lords is at this very moment splitting his mind open, dragging him into a fractured abyss as Time herself falls apart at the seams. That your/his Rose came back, to the End of all things, in time to watch him die. Twice.

His eyes suddenly snap open and you stare in at a face –your face– pale and smudged with tears and blood.

"Davros." He whispers.

You jump up and spin around to find a gun suddenly inches from your stomach.

"What did you do?!" The Dalek scientist howls. And you have no idea really, until Donna speaks.

"They deadlocked the Bomb controls, but I've managed to override the engine's regulatory systems and directed excessive power up to the fusion reactors. I'd hazard that even with the positive loop sustaining the Bomb's power output, it still needs the main controls to concentrate directionality and without that, the Bomb implodes. So guess what, Davros? This place is set to blow, and you're going down with your hulk of a ship, you bastard."

You stare at her, and can't quite decide if you should laugh or scream. A gun clicks from behind you, and you turn to see Jack leveling a Dalek gun at the half-man. Martha and Mickey have rounded up the Daleks like cattle rustlers, weapons trained on the confused beings, and you can't help but like that analogy.

"I think what Donna means to say is, you're a dead man, pal." Jack edges his way forward.

"Thank you, Jack. Doctor, we have ten minutes."

You eye the guns with no small amount of disdain, but Jack works fine with guns, and you have more pressing matters to attend to. You kneel down by Rose and the Doctor, and prepare to move him to the TARDIS when an incredible blast rocks the ship and sends everyone careening dangerously off-balance.

"Ah… Make that five minutes."

You pick yourself off the floor with a curse, shaking off the dizziness as more Time threads slip away. He looks worse, you think worriedly. Eyes unfocused yet preternaturally large; you can see where ocular capillaries have hemorrhaged under conjunctivae. But still he finds strength to bring a trembling hand up to the side of her head and splays long narrow fingers across her temple. In the Time that passes, too slowly, something unspoken transfers that dawns understanding in her eyes even as his flutter close.

"Rose," the Time Lord smiles beneath the pain, and she smiles back bravely and grips his hand.

"I know. I know."

Your gaze flits between the two of them.

"What?" You can only croak your question, but you know the look that passes over both their faces. You've seen it too many times.

"I'm sorry," he gasps, tears leaking from beneath bruised lids, his hand shaking violently, "I'm so sorry."

Light explodes in your eyes, and a lone howl echoes in the back of your mind.


	4. A Wolf Age

_Apologies for the slow update - and for the tiny chapter that is Ch.4 =) Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, and hope you're enjoying it so far._

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There was no other way. In the brief moments of lucidity, when the pain had dimmed to a roar and an ache, he had searched every possible alternative and came up empty. And now as the Universe screamed in his ear, as Time clawed at his brain in desperation, as Reality unraveled and took his mind with it, he can only conclude that Fate had an enormous capacity for cruelty.

But it must be done.

And when he shows her, she understands, his Rose. She understands that in the face of this force of destruction, nothing else matters; not her family, not self-preservation, not even them.

So he opens her mind whilst holding back his, until the link was strong enough, until he is sure it will hold. The raw power is coaxed to life as he establishes himself as the conduit, allowing her to latch onto his mind and draw from the streams of Reality, from his Sense. He feels himself bleeding under the strain, and wonders if he will be sane enough to regenerate when the time comes.

No matter. He never thought he'd die any other way but saving the Universe.

And Rose deserved no less either.

"I'm so sorry," he says. _Forgive me._

She smiles as their link completes.

_I love you._

_- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _

You come to full consciousness, and register silence.

Well, no, not absolute silence. There is still a hum filling the spaces of the room, a hum non-mechanical but still radiating power through to your bones.

It is warm.

The light is -wrong?- orange.

You sit up with a breath and watch as she glows in the centre of the Vault, right arm stretching into the cosmos of her mind's eye. You feel the wrongness of Time slowed; a steady ache builds in your head as Reality reverses on itself, repairing destruction by undoing it. Entropy defied, chaos to order, and it makes your head swim. Such is the power of the Wolf.

Donna sits down abruptly, and you sympathise with her discomfort. The others, though they don't feel it, can probably guess at what was happening. So this is it - they must be saying - this is the Bad Wolf. No one speaks, yet you can almost hear them think. Even Davros and Caan are silent.

Planets rebuild themselves. Time is stitched back thread by thread. How long she holds this you will never know, but when the last piece of Reality folds back into its rightful place, when it is finally finished – that, _that_ you knew.

Then noise floods back into your senses, as a siren abruptly blares.

Rose, in the meanwhile, quietly collapses to the floor.


	5. Set Sail from the East

_Thanks everyone for reading and reviewing thus far. 5__th__ chapter up. It's Jack this time. And this is where it begins to really deviate from the original. Enjoy. _

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"No! You can't have, what did you do?!" Davros is busy shrieking and I'm sweating and my finger is slipping on the trigger.

"Rose!" Jackie screams and drags Sarah Jane across half the floor to reach her daughter. Mickey tries to hold on to her as well – _she's not having any of that, Mickey-boy_.

"Get into the TARDIS, all of you!" The Doctor, the other Doctor, orders, leaping to his feet and swaying slightly as his heart – one heart? – works hard to overcome a mild hypotension.

"Rose!" She fights Mickey, who eventually lets go of her and scoops up her daughter in his arms.

"Jackie, get in the TARDIS. I've got Rose. Move!"

"Martha! Sarah Jane," the Doctor calls. "Jack. Come on Donna, move it."

"The three-fold man is one! The Fire and the Dark Lord will be no more!"

I hitch my gun. "Somebody get the Doc. I've got him covered."

The Doctor runs over to pick up the prone form. He struggles with the weight, and I can tell he tries not to look too surprised or upset. He was stronger as a Time Lord.

"You alright?" I call as I back away, always keeping myself in between the Daleks and my Doctors.

"Just-" he resorts to dragging the long body, "- dandy. Almost there."

"This is not the end, Doctor!" Davros screeches. A cable falls between us, sparking and setting fire to the floor where fluid has leaked from coolant pipes. "You may have won this time, but we will meet again!"

"You can shoot him, you know," the blue-suit Doctor hisses as he reaches the door. "Shoot him, kill him, I don't care."

And I almost do. But an explosion rocks the room, and I only have time to turn and drag the two of them the last centimetres into the TARDIS before the door slams shut against a raging fireball. Donna throws another lever, and the old ship takes off into the Vortex with a roiling shudder.

I roll to my feet and lift the Doctor, the one in the brown suit, in my arms. He is heavier than he looks.

"She's breathing, but I'm not getting any response from her." Martha turns Rose on her back as she checks for life signs. Jackie gives a soft moan of distress and Sarah Jane holds on to her tight.

"Med bay," the Doctor –Blue- gestures to Mickey and I, but before we can even take a step, the body in my arms convulses and takes in a strangled breath.

"Doc!" I yell in surprise. He writhes in my grip and I try not to drop him as I lay him beside Rose.

"S-she d-did it… Rose!" He stutters, eyes rolling back in his head. "R-Rose!"

I glance up at the Doc- at Blue, who crouches over his –twin?- with an unreadable expression.

"She's right here," he tells his self, "Rose is right here."

"No!" The Doctor cries. "No no no no Bad Wolf takes and gives and doesn't give back she doesn't she can't I can't turn it back I-"

He chokes and I hold him steady. His nose has started bleeding again. Martha looks at me, torn by a hundred emotions.

"We'll get you to the Med Bay, Doctor. We'll get you some help," she smoothes a hand over his forehead, "you and Rose, both."

The Doctor trembles beneath my hand but is quiet. I nod to Mickey, who gets to working his arms under Rose.

"Get them up, follow me," Blue stands to his feet and checks with Donna ever so briefly before leading us down into the depths of his ship.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

I've never had to use the TARDIS Med Bay. (Not for me of course, but never even for the Doctor, or Rose or Martha.) I suppose I should've expected – well, I didn't know what to expect. So its simplicity surprises me.

"On the beds," Blue directs us to a blank wall that pushes out two air mattresses at a tap of a button.

"Show me what I need to do," Martha says from the doorway, focusing on nothing else but her patients. "I can help them. I can."

"You-" The Doc-Blue starts. But stops his sentence midway with a quiet nod. "Of course."

So he hooks up monitors and drips, showing Martha around the med bay and its equipment. She learns quickly, or she remembers her training; whichever, it doesn't stop me from feeling fantastically proud of our Martha.

They run around the med centre, him explaining his usual mile-a-minute instructions, she absorbing all he had to give her. And we let them, Mickey and I. This is not our area – we're good with guns and hostile aliens, not IV lines and physiological vitals. We were the ones you see on television waiting in rooms with stale coffee in Styrofoam cups; the next of kin, not the swish doctors in blood-spattered theatre gowns. We make sure to play our roles right.

"They gonna be alright, yeah?" Mickey speaks up in the relative quiet. I lean my head back against the wall.

"I dunno, Mick."

His gaze admonishes me for my lack of optimism, but I ignore it. For the first time in a very long while, I didn't feel like lying.


	6. For Silence I Pray

_A/N: Martha's turn. Think it'll only get depressing from here on (as if it weren't already), but nonetheless, hope everyone's been enjoying the story so far. Reviews and constructive criticisms are most welcomed. _

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She watches the others leave, silently, and settles herself into a white armchair for the first watch. The machines are silent – Gallifreyan technology works different, she supposes – and void of steady heart rate bleeps or air hissing in and out of mechanical lungs. She hears only the thrum of the TARDIS and the blood in her ears.

The Doctor's right heart had failed, had stopped working completely; the same one she thumped back to functional rhythm in 16th-century England. If he wakes up, he has to live with only his left for the rest of this regeneration – unless hearts don't grow back even then. If he wakes up.

Maybe if Rose wakes, he will too.

Martha regards the blonde girl on the other bed. Rose Tyler, defender of the universe, as the Doctor fondly put it. She is mildly surprised that the twinge of jealousy isn't stronger, but she's learnt to deal with a lot over the last year, and the year that never was. Anyhow, the End of the Universe is rather inappropriate a time to get weepy over lost loves and missed opportunities.

"You found her," she had said when she finally saw them on the video screen down in the German bunker. Here and now, she leans forward and places a gentle hand on his arm, and repeats those exact words.

He doesn't stir.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She falls asleep watching them, but her sleep is restless and it isn't long before she jerks awake to the sound of someone humming in the darkened room. Slightly disoriented, she blinks sleep from her eyes as her brain processes the necessary information of why is she here, where is here, what time is it, and who is that girl sitting by the bed of the –

"Doctor!"

Rose jerks her head up and the song dies. In the dim illumination of the wall screen, she looks tired and old beyond her years as she gazes straight at her and smiles an alien smile.

"Martha Jones."

"I-" she falters, standing from her chair, "I-Is he alright?"

Rose remains quiet.

"No," she finally says. Her tone affects nonchalance, and the smile stays on her lips, but as she brushes a finger down his cheek, the mask cracks and wavers ever so slightly.

Martha grips the edge of the bed, hard.

"No he's not," Rose continues. "The damage done by the Reality Bomb was… severe. The strain on his Time Sense, it shattered his mind."

The voice loses power, trembles, and sits cold and heavy in her heart.

"He had nothing left when he tapped the Vortex energy, but he gave everything. Established the channel, tore through the fabric of Time and opened himself as the conduit to feed the Vortex into me, to release me, to save the Universe. But it was so much, even for a Time Lord; all that raw energy needed to feed the Wolf surging through his body and his mind, and I could hear him screaming in my head-"

"Stop!" Martha furiously brushes at a wet cheek. "Please, just… don't. I don't want to hear anymore."

The blonde girl stares with ancient eyes that glow dull like burnt bronze, then nods in acquiescence. A faint flavour of disappointment lingers in the golden eyes.

"I'm sorry," she musters after a long minute, "I… I know he saved us. I know you saved us. I know, I-I never said thank you."

"It had to be done. There was no other way."

"But if you still possess, I mean, if you still are Bad Wolf, why can't you fix him?"

Rose shakes her head, and the glow in her eyes dim.

"I'm dying too."

The news sinks another stone in her heart. Martha closes her eyes, and wishes this all away.

"I don't have much time or much energy," she faintly registers the other saying. "I can't fix him, Martha. I can't. You know I'd give anything to, but I can't."

"Why?" The question is obstinate and desperate, but Rose is patient.

"To put back together 900 years of Time and Memory, to re-wire his synapses and return even autonomic control in his hindbrain, much less higher functions and Time Lord powers – that takes more than I have, more than I can give him."

"So you're just going to let him die? And you'll die with him, that it?"

"No. There is one thing still left to be done."

"What 'thing'?" Her confusion tingles with slight panic, but she forces calm through her thoughts and moves to grip the Doctor's right hand.

Rose turns her head to face the door, just as a tall thin figure emerges from behind the sliding glass and comes to a halt in the middle of the room.

"Rose?"


	7. Fated Men

_A/N: It's been ages! So sorry about this delayed update, but school's just been maddening this term. Anyhow, here's Blue!Ten for the next chapter. Thanks to everyone who's been reading and following the story. This won't quite make up for the wait, but hope it's enough for now._

_And as always, comments and reviews are most welcomed. _

_- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -_

"Doctor." Her smile is lovely and sad when you walk up to her and take her in your arms. She buries her face in your shoulder, and you hold on, tight.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," she leans in, "I chose this. There was no other way."

You extricate yourself to take in the sight of her - feel the thrumming of Time under her skin, see the light of supernovas in her eyes.

"He's dying," you state quietly. "You're dying too."

"Yes." She shoots a glance to Martha, who looks away. "We won't make it. He wouldn't last a day without the machines, and my body can't handle the Vortex energies for much longer. It's up to you now."

Ice creeps into your heart. She catches something in your expression and her fingers find your arm.

"You have to carry on."

"But I'm not…" you flounder spectacularly. "I'm not… I don't know who I am anymore. I'm not the Doctor, the real Doctor. I know, everyone knows, something's just different, something _wrong_, and I can't be who you want me to be - "

"Don't say that." She scolds, leaving no time for you to form further protests. "This has to be done; the Universe still needs her Doctor to protect her. That's you, Doctor. Half human, fully Time Lord…"

"That makes one and a half of me." Your laugh stutters out erratically.

"Maybe that's exactly what She needs."

Your teeth find your lower lip and you bite down, hard. Because you want to trust Rose so badly, trust that she is doing the right thing- the necessary thing. Because you want to convince yourself that you are the Doctor as much as is the man on the bed.

Because you don't want lose her again, but you will, and you have to.

"I don't have a choice, do I?" The statement is devoid of resentment, but still you feel her flinch slightly at the truth in your words.

_I didn't mean that. Not really._ You don't say it, but when Rose takes your hand, you know she understands.

"It's not difficult. The biotransfer has left you predominantly Time Lord, with certain senses dormant or suppressed. It's only a matter of mapping your neural network to his, and boosting activity in your subcortical regions; nothing we can't manage."

"Will I get another heart?"

"No, but your next regeneration should restart the cell progenitor pathways. You'll have to work harder in this body."

"Bugger." That draws a small laugh from her. She motions for Martha to stand on the other side of you.

"Hands, Doctor."

You watch her take your hands and place them over the cold face of your Other. _Last chance_, you realize, _last chance you'll ever get. _The thought locks in your throat, screams at your hesitation, and so heeding it, you impulsively grab the pale hand atop yours and pull her into a kiss that lasts long and fierce until the both of you break away, gasping for breath, tears running down your faces.

"Rose-"

"Don't." She presses a shaking hand to your chest. "Don't make this any harder."

You nod, but still leaning in, you press your lips to her forehead. "You're brilliant, Rose Tyler. I won't ever forget you."

She smiles through her tears.

"Quite right too."


End file.
